Guild Wars 2

I know what you’re thinking, ‘another thread!?’. While there has certainly been its fair share of threads regarding this topic, very few has actually offered constructive feedback and valid points other than “we hate this map”. While I will explain in detail why exactly skyhammer does not belong in Solo arena.

First I’ll explain the different competitive levels for context.
Casual – This is very basic, you just play for fun basically and do whatever you want. This would be Hotjoin.

Casual Competitive – This would best describe Solo arena. However, many make the mistake of mistaking its “casual” to just be a low skill level mode. The skill level in this mode can be very high to almost professional levels and the higher you get up the ladder. The more understanding players will have of the basics. In this mode you will evolve as a player and mastering the basic understanding of common synergy.
This mode does however lack two major things to actually bring it up to an overall competitive high level. Randomness and team synergy.

Casual Competitive / Competitive – This is Team arena. While everything applies from the former mode. This brings up an entirely new level. Team synergy. While the teams being formed can still be casual competitive, you will now synergy with your team in builds, classes, tactics and so on.

Very Competitive – You’ve established a personal team and you train together when needed for prize tournaments and on a regular rate. This is the highest level of competitiveness Guild Wars 2 has currently achieved.

Professional Competitive – While some may argue ‘But we’ve had an E-sport tournament! This is the level Guild Wars 2 is currently in!‘. While that may be true, it is still far from being a professional competitive level. This level means a player can support and make a living for themselves by only joining tournaments with high prize money. Not to mention that the players at this level, train themselves all the time, as it would be a job. While those that entered the E-sport tournament probably trained for hours together before the day of the tournament, it isn’t consistent training.

So now that we have that out of the way.
Why exactly doesn’t Skyhammer belong in Solo arena?
First of all, the mode itself is Conquest. To simply be put short, you take over platforms and maintain them. With simple mechanics outside that will affect the match, like team buffs and so on.

Every player has in mind for a build to best suit for its need of taking platforms, maintaining platforms and for protecting platforms. Now this is where Skyhammer brings inconsistency to the general game play of the Conquest game mode.
It brings in two major elements that not only affects the game play, but also decides the entire match.

First, we have the fall death. Skyhammer introduces the new mechanic of being able to kill someone instantly if pushed outside of the map.
Secondly, we have a cannon that heavily affects the map for the team in control. No less, on a platform that you may be pushed out to be killed instantly.

This introduces a line of new problems. Like, certain classes being able to more successfully be able to kill someone and put your team in an advantage with specific builds and traits. The problem is that the buffs in this map, are heavily matched with the general game play of the map. While the buffs in a map, should never be a deciding factor. Which the cannon and pushing characters out of a map most efficiently now does.

While Solo arena may be casual competitive, it’s still competitive and it brings inconsistency to how the mode plays out. Skyhammer is perfectly fine in hotjoin, due to its nature. But in a competitive level, regardless if it’s lower than team arena or not. It breaks the balance as someone playing a build specifically for this map, will have a much bigger advantage than someone that is playing a build for consistent Conquest mode.

Imagine this. In Tennis, all of a sudden a new mechanic would be introduced. There would be four red buttons added on the court. If you hit the ball on one of these red buttons on the opposite side, you will instantly win the set.
How do you think players would start training? While the best Tennis players in the world would still be good, this would suddenly bring an inconsistent level of play. Now players would rather than train to be overall good. They would train day and night on accuracy and ball control. To effectively hit the red button as effectively as possible in the matches. This is exactly what Skyhammer does to the general game play of Conquest and it does not belong in Solo Arena at all.

While Skyhammer is a fun map and I like it. It belongs in hotjoin and hotjoin only. While I do realize that the players playing these “certain skyhammer builds” will obviously disagree with me. I do hope that the overall point made is listened to.

Thank you for reading.

This map is TERRIBLE! Anet dropped the ball with this one, spirit watch is fun and competitive.. this skyhammer is just a lame troll paradise. I and most people would prefer to see it removed from solo que. Or atleast edit it and remove the broken glass and the damage done by the cannon.

skeppi.9750:

This map is TERRIBLE! Anet dropped the ball with this one, spirit watch is fun and competitive.. this skyhammer is just a lame troll paradise. I and most people would prefer to see it removed from solo que. Or atleast edit it and remove the broken glass and the damage done by the cannon.

I dislike this map in a competitive environment. But I like the general design and fun it brings in a non serious match (Hotjoin).
I think this is where the general confusion lies, when most people gets asked if they like it, they are probably referring to its enjoyment in hotjoin and not in solo arena (well except those running these ‘special’ builds for the map).

i like it in soloq, should bring it back to teamq!

Skyhammer is fine, Spirit Watch is the worst map by like 1000000000x

Skyhammer would belong in a solo queue that was unrated.

Unfortunately we don’t have an unrated queue.

it’s the best map i enjoy recently.

it’s the only map i can kill bunk guard, bunk/decap engi. bunk warr. mm necro in a few seconds.

with the amount of these bunk builds the other map turn into “decap and bunk” not “kill and hold” anymore

Add me to the “like” Skyhammer side. Having to alter my weapons, utilities and traits for max effectiveness is good. The damage on the cannon could be nerfed a bit, or perhaps made dodgable.

But other than that the map is quite good. And should be played in team queue.

Caliburn.1845:

Add me to the “like” Skyhammer side. Having to alter my weapons, utilities and traits for max effectiveness is good. The damage on the cannon could be nerfed a bit, or perhaps made dodgable.

Ignoring other issues with Skyhammer (mostly that instant kills aren’t regarded by many – if not most – people as a fun or interesting mechanic, no matter what the counterplay may be), the “you have to run a different build” point is terrible right now because we can’t load preset builds at all, or even change traits once in the map. Having to reset your traits and manually reselect them after every match, because of one controversial map, is not okay.

Blackwyn.8127:

I know what you’re thinking, ‘another thread!?’. While there has certainly been its fair share of threads regarding this topic, very few has actually offered constructive feedback and valid points other than “we hate this map”. While I will explain in detail why exactly skyhammer does not belong in Solo arena.
.

I appreciate that you have written an indepth post about why skyhammer is not good for SQ. However, this has been an ongoing issue for months, and there have been MANY posts with constructive feedback about it.

The ONLY response we have gotten on the issue is that a community dev thinks skyhammer is fine because 50% of the people she talked to said it was ok. Basically kittenting in the face of the majority of the community that have been trying to communicate for months what you have pointed out in your post.

Even if it is “50/50” (which I don’t believe, because the sample size is obviously small and flawed and does not take into account real Pvp players.), 50/50 is BAD.

Having HALF of your players forced to do something that completely craps in the face of skill and competitive balance is not good, that’s BAD.

I’d even go so far to say that 50/50 is more like 30/20/50, 30% not caring either way, 20% loving it, and 50% hating it, but of course I can’t prove this basic human nature to the flawed survey system that humans invented.

the fact that skyhammer is still in ranked just shows how much anet cares about our opinion…

skyhammer: you will crap and you will enjoy it :/